College faces $700,000 loss due to drop in enrollment

Considering adding welding, sports medicine programs to attract more students

STERLING -- Northeastern Junior College is looking at a little more than $700,000 in anticipated revenue from tuition that they will not be collecting this school year because of the drop in enrollment.

President Jay Lee gave an update on enrollment and the budget at an NJC Advisory Council meeting on Thursday.

Right now the college has 1,261.7 full-time equivalent (FTE) students, 172 fewer students than last year at this time. When they built the budget for fiscal year 2013 they anticipated enrollment would be down about four percent, at 1,450 FTE; however, it's actually down about 12 percent.

Anticipating a drop in enrollment, the college opted not to keep its arrangement with the Longberg Apartments to use them as another residence hall, as they have in the past. That turned out to be a good decision, because only 81 percent of NJC's student housing is occupied right now.

The college tried to draw more new students for the spring semester with a new Spring Beginnings program, which provides a $100,000 housing scholarship. They have nine students participating in that program.

NJC does have reserves to help with loss of revenue.

"Our reserves are still solid at this point," Lee said. "As we entered in to this fiscal year we had reserves of $3,500,000 available to us, which put us at 22.6 percent of our operating budget. That's solid from a system perspective. It's well within the guidelines that the system requires for all of us, but it is also one of the lowest reserve numbers within the system.

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He pointed out that NJC's reserve numbers do not allow them to do the kind of things some of their sister institutions are able to do, as far as campus improvements.

There will be a number of issues impacting the budget planning for next year, including $270,000 of grant funded positions where the grant is ending. Many of those positions are in the wind tech program.

"We're looking at those positions and trying to determine how we'll fund them," Lee said.

The raises that the faculty will receive as part of a five-year plan to bring the Colorado Community College System (CCCS) faculty within the national average for community college faculty will impact the budget as well.

"We know that that will have a significant impact on our budget, but it's something that we will plan for over the next five years," Lee said.

He also announced they're planning for classified raises for the first time in four years.

Additionally, there are questions about healthcare, how much benefits for staff will cost and the impact that will have on the budget. Lee said they should know more about that in March or April.

It wasn't all bad news. Lee noted Gov. John Hickenlooper's budget for the upcoming year includes an additional $6 million for the CCCS.

"That's good news for the system. Unfortunately, our share of that will not get us out of the hole that we're in," he said.

Also, earlier this week, the state board gave the college the spending authority for a wireless project to install wireless Internet access on campus and NJC received $100,000 in incentive funding to implement a Summer Bridge program.

"Which will work with our students that test in remedial classes and help them get through and be prepared for college level classes in the fall semester," Lee said.

"Lots to still determine in terms of how we do that, especially in light of the recommendations that will come from a task force that just delivered their report to the system, about dealing with developmental education."

He pointed out that in order to improve enrollment, "we really find ways to bring more students here that are new, that haven't considered NJC in the past."

One way they're looking at doing that is by adding some new academic programs. Right now, they're looking at a pipeline welding program and a sports medicine program that Sterling Regional MedCenter has approached them about working together on.

Plus, in terms of athletics they're looking at adding a women's soccer team.

It's not just about adding new programs though; they're also looking at expanding existing programs. NJC is in the process of writing a Title III grant application for audio and visual production, which would allow those programs to grow and NJC to remodel E.S. French Hall, or at least the Dorothy Corsberg Theatre.

While NJC is working hard at finding ways to increase enrollment, they know that it's not going to happen overnight.

"I think we need to be honest though and recognize that we will be going through a period of time where we're not going to see a lot of new students coming in and how does the college respond to that?" Lee said. "I think if we plan accordingly, appropriately, we'll be in good shape and we'll build up things very well without cutting a lot of services and those kind of things."